


Trott: On The Run

by Woolve



Series: The Hatmen of Hat Films [3]
Category: Hat Films - Fandom, The Yogscast
Genre: Fear of Death, Fiction is escapism, M/M, Trott chases his own tail, futility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-16 00:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9266126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woolve/pseuds/Woolve
Summary: Trott is wild and free in the big open world. He's escaping from himself, and escaping from his friends. But Smith waits restlessly. Will Trott make it home? Will he thwart his destiny?





	1. Trott the cat.

“You have the soulful eyes of the deer” Chris whispered into Smith's ear. 

Smith looked at him, with the soulful eyes of the deer. “I know.” 

There was sadness in those eyes, lurking in the upper corners like a thief in the night, primed to steal the fruit of love’s labour from Trott’s busy hands.

“I sense a sadness in your soulful eyes, my dearest Smith” intimated Trott, concerned at sadness sensed and unexpressed, repressed into the emotion flesh of feeling’s muscles, unflexed.

“The pantheon of our puppeteered lives play on our strings a sour tune, Trott. I fear this be our last night before they cut my strings and set me to jiggling on the floor, cut loose from my fate and unsure of my stability.” Talked Smith, saying words one after another until their conclusion was punctuated with a solemn silence.

Trott, in his characteristic absence of thought, referred his eyes to the location of his hands, bare and skeletal upon Smith's chest. In an abandoned motel in the Arizona desert. “We've run away, haven't we?” He whispered into the undefined mess of his current reality.  
Smith's eyes faced full forwards in bolt lightning fear. The face of doubt looked out from the glassy hollow of his eyes, mouth salivating. “You understand, don't you Trott? Faith devours itself, and it's hollowed me out.” He no longer had the soulful eyes of the deer.

The mud sucked at Trott’s genitals as the crowd circled about him; mocking his girth, naming him cuckold of his shame. His ancestry formed a rope around his neck and he was pulled up into the trees.

Trott kicked Smith away, wrestled from his slumber by that unfortunate night time blowie. The room was dark and Trott reached out to touch Smith on his eyes. He touched his eyelids one after another and then rested his palm on Smith's nose. He closed in his fingers lightly, bringing them down on the cheekbone and then the brow. He felt the brow quiver, and Trott began to cry.

Smith adjusted his mask and closed the seams with his thumb. The illusion never fades, and the day never comes.

Virgil passes by with the tour bus as he passes through Purgatory. He gestures to Trott and clarifies the imperfect metaphor. “This is Hell 2.” He announces over the loud voice machine that uses a microphone. A man in a pink shirt and floral print hat squints at Trott and purses his lips in a thoughtful expression while opening a can of coca cola. “If you listen closely you can hear the devil beating his wings from all the way up here.” Virgil says. The tour bus moves on, down into the inferno.

Smith took off his mask. He was nobody in particular. Not familiar or welcoming. Trott was a cat. Nobody in particular picked Trott up and walked out of the quarry and into the forest.

They crossed a dirty river, avoiding the moss.

“Can you catch me up?” Trott meowed. Nobody in particular replied. “So I've been sent here to relive my shame and my desire forevermore.” Nobody in particular explained further. 

They picked mushrooms and left them in a bundle at the base of a tree.

“So fiction is purgatory?” Trott catted. “My desire for romantic entanglement with a fictionalised Smith has condemned me to Hell.” Nobody in particular consoled him. Trott wasn't alone. He was more real now than he was then. “But I'm a cat.” Nobody in particular explained. Cats are easier to carry. If you were a full person then there’d have to be a carriage. And Trott couldn't walk by himself out of Hell.

They dispersed a gang of pigeons and upset the balance of nature for 30 minutes as the pigeons reassembled to continue their business.

Nobody in particular explained. Trott couldn't escape on his own legs, because the condemned get lost in the forest and return to the quarry. “Why a quarry?” Trott asked. “Because I resent my father's working class background and fancy myself a part of the metropolitan elite,” Trott answered. “So much for that. I have internalised homophobia.”

The forest was dense and confused. Trott could relate. He's dense and confused too. Like the forest. Like a book with no margins. Or a badly lit room. Trott felt suddenly uncomfortable being carried. “I want down!” 

Nobody in particular held him by the belly and extended their arms forward. Trott’s legs flailed around helplessly.

The trees got more dense but they were also thinner, so in terms of space it wasn't much different. 

“You said fiction was a trap.” They had. “So how do you get out?” They were on it. “Thanks then.”

The forest was endless as a metaphor about confusion can be and eventually they were back at the quarry. Nobody apologized. 

Trott swung the axe at the stone, and felt the weight in his chest. He looked at the earth and wondered where it's conclusion was.

He woke up on the sofa, oily faced and endless as the room. There was no relief for the sofa because it can't be any bigger or smaller of its own agency. It's a futile sofa.


	2. Intermission 1: I'm sorry Trott, I'll try harder next time.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've failed as a writer and a guide.

Trott is something different to me now. I've got him in purgatory and I'm prodding him with a stick. He's looking at me again.

I tried to get him out of purgatory last time but I couldn't help. I just carried him around and sent him back. Truth is I just wanted him to keep me company for a bit. I don't know how to write a real, honest life. This surreal mess of cobbled together imagery and ideas is all I have. I'm very confused.

Trott's jumping up and down. All the white husks are still at work. I don't have any control over this imagery. It's all association. Stream of consciousness. Trott's the victim. The prisoner of my reckless, empty imagination. What's he telling me?

“I want to escape!” he's saying. He wants to be a full person rather than an extension of me. But I'm not full enough to break off into more little people. I don't have that kind of capacity for character building. I suppose he symbolises my desire to create, whereas I, the narrator, am my ability to try.

“I need to fuck off.” Trott says. His anxieties are mine. He's a vessel for my thoughts. Weird to be using the name of a real person for it. All he is to me is a mask.

I've erased Trott. Or no, I've made him a cat again. What's his personality, outside of being my voice in the world I've created. I've set him up as an outlet for myself from which to challenge my own narration.

The quarry is stupid. Ripped right out of an adaptation of Dante’s Inferno. I'm way up above it. It's a quarry in a forest. 

Trott is a cat in my arms. It's just a cat. He's not me and he'll never wake up because I don't know who he is or who he should be. I'm not fit to make characters. They're all me, too much.

Who in this world has soulful eyes? When the cat wakes up, I'll try again to make him seem real. I'll let him narrate again, and I'll let him go through the forest and be himself until he's no longer me. I need him to be someone else, so I know I'm not alone in my head.


End file.
